My book, Fight Back, is finally published. You can buy the ebook at Amazon or Kobo. Of if you prefer to get the softcover version, you can order it from Amazon or Indigo or pick it up in bookstores in early January.

Mine is one of the few Canadian books focusing on consumer issues, such as telecommunications, travel and retailing. It has a fabulous foreword from David Chilton, author of The Wealthy Barber Returns and newest member of CBC Dragons’ Den.

Unlike the gloomy retirement books written by some authors, The Real Retirement tries to make you feel better about not having saved a nest egg equal to 70 per cent of your working income.

“You likely will not need as much money in your retirement years as many experts have suggested,” they say. “Yes, you will require more health care and other attention, especially as your age advances, but their costs will not threaten your financial security.

“Given some basic planing (a paid-off mortgage, zero major debts, no dependents at home), you should be able to live fairly comfortably with retirement income representing 50 per cent of your pre-retirement earnings.”

Back to my book, Fight Back, I will give away several free copies to readers who post comments (below) about how they recognized and resisted corporate trickery.

So, please send your personal stories and best tips. I’ll contact you if you win a prize.

Canadian wireless providers should be required to implement a monthly bill limit for data roaming to safeguard consumers against bill shock. The monthly limit would be chosen by the subscriber or default to $50, in addition to the subscriberâ€™s monthly fees.

In addition, wireless providers should temporarily suspend data service when the subscriber incurs roaming fees exceeding this limit.

The three-year contract attracted the most complaints in the CRTC discussions. And as many readers point out, unlocking a phone doesn’t help much when you’re still locked into a long-term commitment with your carrier.

The issue of locked cellphones has long been a source of consumer fear and frustration, since some wondered whether unlocking phones that were rendered unusable when switching wireless providers was legal. In certain respects, this was an odd question to even have to ask.

No one would ever question whether consumers have the right to tinker with their car or to use the same television if they switch providers from cable to satellite, yet the wireless industry somehow convinced the public that unlocking their phones – consumers’ own property – was wrong.

Finally, blogger Darryl Moore argues that preventing carriers from locking phones is the first step. We also have to talk about the way that smart phone manfacturers stop you from “jailbreaking” in order to run different software.

Not only do we need laws prohibiting the locking of cell phones to specific cellular networks. We need laws prohibiting the locking of cell phones to specific manufacturers, allowing them to decide what software will run on your phone or not.

Indeed without this prohibition, the first one is sort of useless, as there is nothing stopping the manufacturers from acting like a proxy for the network providers and imposing the same or similar restrictions on your phone that the network providers no longer can.

Kavitha Nadarajah got a $7,000 energy-efficient KitchenAid refrigerator built into her kitchen in April 2007. It lasted just five years before it needed to be replaced.

Alas, the control board for her model wasn’t available any more. A factory in Japan had closed, leaving the appliance maker without parts.

KitchenAid customer service said it couldn’t do anything because the refrigerator was not under warranty. Later, it offered to deliver a similar model for $5,000 and then $4,000. The same model costs around $7,000 at Sears Canada.

“We are a family of four with two small kids and have been without a refrigerator for more than three weeks now. As you can imagine it is a frustrating experience,” she said.

“Besides, when we bought the energy efficient but expensive refrigerator, we expected it to last at least 10 years. It makes no sense, neither financially nor environmentally, to be forced to buy another refrigerator so soon.”

I sent the information to my Whirlpool contact in Michigan. But I can’t say for sure whose efforts made the difference, since Kavitha tried her own tactics.

Since it took more than two months to resolve the issue, Kavitha has vowed never to buy any appliance brands owned by Whirlpool again. She won the social media battle, but lost her fight to get a new refrigerator just like the one that died prematurely.

Based on the complaints I get, I’d say most new appliances don’t last as long as they did before. They have more computer circuitry. They are subject to frequent changes. And the parts seem to be perennially out of stock.

I’ve written about this at my blog, here and here. And I’ve been hanging on to my old washing machine and dryer (now 20 years old and going strong), fearing their replacements may not be as durable.

So, while I’m a fan of using Twitter to resolve consumer complaints, I’m concerned about the fragility of household appliances. Most people find it easier to throw them out than to fight for a low-cost repair or replacement from the manufacturer.